1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer network communications and, more particularly, to the collection of event data information on Web sites.
2. Description of the Related Art.
When a computer network user begins a communication session over the Internet, the user can request data files from an Internet-connected computer called a file server or Web server using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). These data files comprise what are commonly referred to as “pages” or Web pages. The Web pages are typically written in a type of programming code called hypertext mark-up language (HTML), extensible style sheet language (XSL), or extensible markup language (XML), and can be viewed or displayed through a graphical user interface (GUI) browser program such as “Netscape Communicator” from Netscape Communications Corporation or “Internet Explorer” from Microsoft Corporation. The network nodes and collection of such data files are commonly referred to as the “World Wide Web” or the Internet. A collection of related files under a common Internet network domain location or node is commonly referred to as a Web site. The files available at a Web site can include a mixture of text, image, video, and audio data.
A network user can request a Web site page by clicking on a link in the browser window or by typing in a uniform resource locator (URL) in the browser location toolbar. A request for a page results in a message being sent from the user's browser to the Web site server, providing the URL of the requested page. Data such as “cookies” and header information may also be sent along with such request. Typically, cookies are stored on the client system or computer, thus, when a user returns to the same Web site or Web page, the browser automatically sends a copy of the cookie back to the server. That is, when a user's browser requests a Web page from a server at a given domain, the browser also provides any cookies it has that originated from that domain. If no cookie is provided, the server can provide one with the Web page data, which the browser will store. Thereafter, when the browser again requests a page from the Web site, the browser will automatically provide the stored cookie to the server along with its request for a page.
Information may also be passed to the Web server via parameters contained as part of the URL address. For example, “HTTP://www.URLAddress.com/x.cgi?account_no=123” is a URL containing the parameter, account_no with value 123, that is passed to the Web server as part of the page request. The string “account_no=123” is also sometimes referred to as a query string. Links or hyperlinks are elements in a Web page, such as one or more words, phrases, symbols, or images that enable a user to view another page by clicking on such link. Such link may also be a link to enable the user to download a file. Links that are images are often called banners. Links are generally coded with an anchor tag that specifies the URL address of the requested data file, e.g.:<a href=“HTTP://www.URLaddress.com/requestedpage. html”> . . . </a>.In this example, the requested page is named “requestedpage.html”, found in the domain of www.URLaddress.com.
The Internet has become an important medium of commerce so that measuring the success of commerce-related Web sites is increasingly important. Businesses have a need to know the returns on their investments in Web sites and be able to quickly respond to information related to user's interaction with their Web sites. As a result, businesses have an increasing interest in keeping track of users' interaction with their sites. Such interaction is referred to herein as event-tracking information, which includes for example, user interaction with the links clicked on a Web page or Web site, electronic shopping carts and search engines, the referring links (or entrance links), the click-thru percentage (percentage of times a link is displayed versus clicked), location of links within a Web page or window, advertisement banners, downloadable files, the types of files downloaded, and the like.
In determining the extent of such user interaction with Web sites, tools to monitor such information are difficult and time consuming to implement. Web server software applications, such as MICROSOFT® “Internet Information Server” (IIS) or NETSCAPE® “Enterprise Sever”, have the capability of recording information to log files, which are not available in real time. Such log files contain HTTP request date and time, the requested URL address (including query string, if applicable), network user's IP, the referring Web page, HTTP version, and the like. Information recorded or captured in a log file, however, is dependent on the Web server software. Several pieces of information related to event-tracking information, such as the most popular link in a Web page or Web site, number of times a file is downloaded from a particular Web page, are not captured by the Web server software in its log file. Moreover, special reporting software is required in order to view the information contained in the log files in a consistent manner.
Active server pages (ASPs) can also be used to obtain information regarding a user's interaction with a Web site. When a browser requests an ASP, the Web server generates a page with HTML code and sends it back to the browser. By tracking the generation of ASPs a Web server operator can gain information regarding the various pages that a user visited on a Web site. However, such tracking only provides traffic information, such as the particular pages that the user visited, rather than information that describes how the user interacted with the pages.
From the discussion above, it should be apparent that there is a need for an event-tracking system, that captures information related to a user's interaction with a Web site, that is easy to implement and would involve very minimal changes or additions to existing or new Web sites. The present invention fulfills this need.